I think it’s an overwhelmingly millennial behavior to think for a moment that we “invented” hobbies that for the majority of human existence were relatively commonplace (if not the default standard). We pride ourselves for stepping away from social media, as if no one in the history of humankind has lived without Facebook (er — Meta) and pat ourselves on the back for figuring out how to “adult” (aka budget and maybe cook some vegetables).
It’s for this reason that I won’t pretend that this article is any sort of revelation. I’m not breaking new ground or espousing an idea that will revolutionize my generation’s way of viewing the world.
I’m just sharing my experience, because this, at its core, is a blog, and I do not expect anyone to read who is not interested in my mental musings.
Still here? Cool.
A few weeks ago, in the middle of a seven mile walk with my dog, my headphones ran out of battery.
This might not sound like much of a tragedy to the unfamiliar, but let me assure you, dear reader, that I am not someone who enjoys being alone with my thoughts (ironic for someone who is perfectly capable of sitting with them long enough to write them all down, but I digress).
I paused in my journey long enough to fruitlessly attempt turning them off and turning them back on again, only to get a few meager additional seconds of my audiobook to drown out the silence around me before they inevitably died.
Feeling stranded, I lifted my head to look around me. I was over 3 miles from home with nothing but my thoughts and my dog to keep me company. Even if I power walked home, I was still looking at a solid 45 minutes of… silence.
Well, silence and the sounds of the cars driving past me — I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere.
For a moment, I considered calling my boyfriend to have him come pick me up, but that seemed over the top even to me. So, with a sigh, I resigned myself to my fate and began walking.
My headphones are large, monstrous things, reader. And because they would not fit in my pocket, I decided to keep them atop my head. This, as you can imagine, contained the added benefit of insinuating to strangers that I was otherwise occupied and could not hear their greetings.
So, smiling politely to those I passed and silently suffering inside, I walked.
And for a few minutes I was simply filled with frustration that I would have to wait to get home to discover what happened next in my audiobook.
And then I began to look around me a little, at the midday Sunday sun poking through the tall trees surrounding me and the hillside houses looming above like sentinels. Too often, when I walked enraptured by a podcast or an audiobook, I find myself looking at a downward angle, watching the path in front of me but seeing the images described to my ears.
So I rarely noticed that there was a whole cacophony of life swirling around my head, noises and chatter and sights and smells, all far away from the noise-cancelling cocoon of my typical safety shield.
After a while, after I took in my surroundings with renewed interest, I started letting my mind wander to other places.
And that’s when something rather unexpected happened.
I know it’s super cheesy to talk about all “the beauty of life” we miss when we keep ourselves constantly distracted. That’s been ruminated on a million times by people more articulate than I.
But what I found truly magical was the moment when I once again found myself distracted from my immediate surroundings. Not by a narrator’s voice describing the fictional actions of imagined people.
But by my own fictitious wonderings.
I thought for a while about the manuscript I’ve been working on, stuck at 20,000 words and circling a plot point I couldn’t move past.
And I figured out what catalyst I needed to introduce to move the story forward.
I thought about a project at work that was troubling me, played out the difficulties in my head, and settled on a course of action I could propose to take next steps.
Then I meditated on the conflict brewing between Russia and Ukraine and discovered the perfect remedy for peace!
(This is sarcasm).
No, reader (if you’re still there). I didn’t discover anything life-changing or world-altering. I simply found that, when I allowed myself a few undistracted minutes to not work, not listen, but simply to think, I could remove so many obstacles from my path.
I’ve made it a point, since that first accidental day, to intentionally set aside a few of my walks each week to wander in “silence.” I can’t give up my headphones completely — I enjoy audiobooks too much for that. But when I dedicate a 20-minute lunchtime walk to some silent contemplation, I find myself returning to work with more energy and ideas. And when I wander for an hour on Sunday mornings, I come home ready to make progress in my novel.
I certainly did not invent the concept of moderate exercise as an inspirational tool. But I am one of its recent converts.